Well, we have to provide the world's best schools. We certainly don't have them, but that's our objective.

If a hurricane strikes, we can blame the president for not being there; we can blame Congress and FEMA; we can blame the state governments; but in the end, it's the mayors and the local city governments that have to be prepared for emergencies and be prepared to act.

Go walk the streets of Beijing. It's pretty hard to argue it isn't a modern city. Now, if you go outside [of Beijing], in the rural areas, that's true. But rural America, you can say the same thing, in Appalachia there's an awful lot of poverty and lack of education.

I think we are not serious about attacking the long-term debt problem, and that's one of the things that he's going to have to find a way to get on the agenda.

There is no business in America that would be prevented from taking results into account when making personnel decisions.

The public is upset. If they haven't lost their job, they know somebody that has. If they haven't lost their house, they know somebody that has. What do you do? When something's wrong, it's government's job to fix it, it must be government that's responsible for causing it.

In New York City, a lot of people think "the great outdoors" is the area between your front door and a taxi cab.